Budgeting for a parish magazine/newsletter?

Question

Hello! Can anyone help me understand what needs to be considered, with regards to funding of some kind of regular parish magazine/newsletter, featuring news about the council and what's on in the area.

I'm relatively new to the role of councillor and unsure whether it would be inappropriate to suggest this be funded from our normal budget/precept.

Is their any guidance? Struggling with Google on this one!

Answer 1

Parish councils have the power to publish a newsletter and so you need to consider who is writing the articles and who is editing.  If your council allows for advertising, you will also need to work out the cost of that.  Personally, my council doesn't allow companies to advertise in the parish newsletter, it keeps it cleaner.  You also need to consider the printing costs and that is dependent on the number of pages, if they are in colour etc.  Finally, distribution costs if you are using a specialist company.  Some parishes have volunteers instead.

Comments

In addition to Mrs. Abster's sound advice I would suggest writing a service level agreement with the printing company and the distribution company if you use one.  If you carry too many ads people will regard it as junk mail and might not have the patience to read it all the way through.  Make electronic copies available and keep them archived on your PC website too.

Answer 2

Of course the simple solution and probably the most cost efficient way would be to have the magazine online and attached to the PC website. It would be up to date and previous issues accessible all the time. For those who want the printed version then it could be simply produced as a .pdf file for downloading and self printing. For those who do not have computer access a limited amount could be printed from PC equipment for depositing in the local shop/pub/ at a nominal cost.

If the pc website is a problem then there are many companies out there who give access to online magazine flipbooks ( some free) and all that would be needed would be a link on the PC site to the flipbook and someone to produce it in .pdf format to upload into a flipbook.

Just an idea